Days with multiple activities

Feature Requests
1

For various reasons, it might make sense to do multiple rides in a day, even if one longer ride might be optimal from a training perspective. These reasons include:

  • Commuting
  • Limited time: You may need to work around other commitments, which leaves no room for a longer, continuous ride.
  • Weather conditions: If it gets dark, cold, or rainy, you might want to finish your remaining training indoors.
  • Zwift Races: You have completed and saved The race, but want to do The remaining training.

In such cases, it would be helpful if Xert better supported this kind of setup. I believe this could even encourage athletes to complete the additional training, thereby boosting their fitness.

The two first images below illustrate I ride I had now in Februar when I had to stop before I reached by target because it was getting dark and I had some family commitments. The remaining XSS were therefore done on the trainer after dinner. The third image shows an alternative way of visualizing this in the calendar.

So, how does it work today?

Let’s assume I have a target of 200 XSS (ignoring High and Peak XSS for now). If I complete 150 XSS during my first outdoor ride, I’ll see a red or orange circle indicating that I haven’t reached my target for the day. If I then hop on the trainer after dinner and complete the remaining 50 XSS, I get another activity in my calendar, but the red or orange circle remains. However, it would make more sense for the calendar to show a green circle for the day instead.

If you turn on the “Summarize days with multiple activities,” you’ll see a green circle, but the individual activities will be hidden. Of course, this makes this feature less usefull.

What would be ideal?

It would be great if Xert could combine these activities in a smarter way. When running the Forecast AI, Xert should provide a combined XSS target for the day, considering both the planned activities and the Placeholder item. Whether you split these into multiple activities or combine them into a longer one shouldn’t matter. Therefore, I believe the compliance marker should reflect the full day’s progress, even if there are multiple activities. The individual activities should still be visible, and the target should be the one that was originally planned when the Forecast AI was run. Adding or modifying planned activities after a Forecast AI run shouldn’t change the compliance target for the day.

This should also work with the Trainer tab, and especially the Magic Bucket data field. When doing a second ride, the targets should adjust based on what’s already been completed. For instance, if 150 XSS has been completed, the remaining 50 XSS should be the new target for the second ride. If you do a second ride now you will get the full targets for the day on the second ride, making it only useful for the first ride.

Maybe not stright forward, but I think this will make it easier to get a green calendar. What do you think @xertedbrain and @ManofSteele ?

image
image496Ă—610 23 KB

image
image496Ă—954 84.7 KB

image
image478Ă—1124 91.3 KB

3 Likes
2

Handling multiple activities/workouts per day is a huge pain to manage and get right, especially for today. We’ve poured a lot of work into managing this and we are still working to improve it (we have a someone on it now). If you can think of all the variations, you’ll see why this isn’t so easy.

Our goal is to ensure it works without issue in planning and perform the training. This is the primary goal. A secondary benefit is improve how we show adherance (green circles) to the prescribed training.

3 Likes
3

Thanks @xertedbrain . I can see it is not straight forward. But it would be very nice to have some improvements here, as it can often allow for a larger training volume.

4

I’m finally getting to playing around with Magic Buckets. On a given day, if I’m on an AI plan, is it using the forecasted work for that day as a target or the balance of work needed to keep me on track for end goal low/high/peak TLs?

5

It is using the forecast of the day. If you have selected a workout for the day (for the forecast item), it will use that instead.

1 Like
6

I use magic buckets on my Garmin and Rouvy for entertainment. I often ride multiple routes in a succession to fill my buckets and reach my daily goals and each ride is sent to XERT as an activity…sometime three or more different rides. Magic Buckets tells me I have reached my goals but the platform indicates I have not met my daily goals. I prefer to have Rouvy update XERT rather than Garmin for other reasons. It is a bit discouraging to look at all the orange dots.

Is it safe to assume that the impact on my stats in XERT are correct even though the orange dots exists? In other words, are the orange dots just cosmetic or do they impact the algorithm?

7

It is a bit hard to tell based on the text here. I suggest you include a screenshot from the calendar.

If you upload multiple rides to Xert, then the first one will be matched towards the Forecast item. So if the goal was 100 XSS, and you did 50, you will get a red circle. If you do a second ride at the same day, that will give you a new item, but there is not target for this. So even if they total to say 100 XSS, the planner will show a red circle (unless you use the aggregate setting in the calendar).

1 Like
8

Good question.

You are correct that it is just cosmetic. Note that the situation is complex since in some cases two activities are to complete the daily forecasted training and in other cases one is for training and the other is for another planned activity such as a commute. Automatically assigning incoming activities to the appropriate forecasted or planned activity isn’t something the system does at the moment

3 Likes
9

Perfect. As long as my stats are correct then I can get past the cosmetic.

Thanks for all you do and the responsiveness.

10

Right. If I’ve chosen a workout for the day, rather that “just” the forecast, then Magic Buckets will simply use the XSS targets for that workout instead, even if I don’t actually follow that workout?

1 Like
11

I understand that multiple activities in a day are difficult. Mostly it is working for me but I’m wondering if there is a work around to my problem.

My typical day is two commutes and a trainer ride. I like to run the adapt forecast in the evening and select my training for the next day. Then I have to write it down because once I do my morning commute it disappears. My commute is assumed to be my training.

Later when I’ve done all three rides it’s all fine but I really would like the chosen workout not to disappear.

Suggests welcome!

2 Likes
12

I’m in a similar situation, on days with lots of XSS I like to do part of my high and peak in a structured workout indoors and then hit the road to complete my remaining goals, it would be great if Magic Buckets would recalculate the remaining targets instead of sugesting another full workout.

4 Likes